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Hugh Grant's Privacy Crusade Reaches Parliament

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BBC

Hugh Grant may be right: Just because he's paranoid, that doesn't mean he isn't being watched.

A day after a government investigator testified that Grant and then-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley were specifically targeted by News of the World back in 2003, the actor spoke before Parliament about the latest round of information-gathering tactics employed by scoop-seeking paparazzi.

"Do you really think this is a way for grown men to be behaving?" is what Grant said he told a photographer who was following Tinglan Hong, the mother of his infant daughter.

Grant, who since the News of the World hacking scandal broke has become a de facto spokesman for victims of Britain's tabloid culture, said that the media's "hubris is incredible" if they think that they are responsible for turning people like him into celebrities.

Successful films have nothing to do with an actor's private life, and vice versa, Grant says.

"Tom Hanks is a good man, a lovely family man who does lots of charity work, an all-round good egg," he noted. "But some of his films flop."

And as far as his biggest public debacle—his 1995 arrest for lewd conduct in L.A. after soliciting the services of prostitute Divine Brown—goes, Grant does not fault the media for covering the scandal.

"That was on the public record, I've no argument with that," the actor said. "It's not my beef."

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